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Monday, April 8, 2013

Taoist Business Leadership

Leadership from the standpoint of Taoist teachings is
paradoxical or even oxymoronic in nature. A leader intending to apply the
teachings should therefore be willing to tolerate the co-existence as apparent
opposites, or at the very least be willing to lead in ways not typically
thought to be consistent with leadership. If this seems too taxing, one might
consider the potential benefits. For one thing, leading in unanticipated and
unusual ways may give one a sustainable competitive advantage both in terms of
alternative leaders below and competitors leading other organizations. Put
another way, going down the rarely trodden path opens one up to being able to
use something of value unknown to other people. One could “corner the market”
on that asset.

The most well-known Taoist symbol suggests that opposites may not be absolute, and thus as mutually-exclusive as we think. There may be control in letting go, as a white dot exists amid the black. Source: personaltao.com

In the Tao Te Ching,
verse 57 is relevant to leaders. “(I)f you want to be a great leader you must
learn to follow the tao.” Fortunately, defining the Tao is not necessary. The
verse elaborates on how a leader can
follow it. First, “stop trying to control.” This entails letting go “of fixed
plans and concepts.” Rather than relying on strategy and a marketing concept,
for instance, the leader acts in line with the world governing itself. This may
sound absurd, particularly if one is enthralled by the concept of strategic leadership. Planning is less effective than
moving out of the way and letting the organization run itself. To say that such
leadership is rare in modern organizations is an understatement, so we really
don’t know whether stepping out of the way is better than strategizing.

Another means of getting out of the way so the people can
flourish involves laying off the policies that prohibit. From the text, “the more
prohibitions you have the less virtuous people will be.” In other words, the
more a leader tells followers what they can’t do, the more the followers will
do things that the leader doesn’t want. It may be a bit like trying to squeeze
jello in one’s hand. The more you squeeze, the more jello goes through one’s
fingers. The prohibitions may be a form of aggression, which results in
aggression in reply from the other side. The next line of the verse is, “the
more weapons you have, the less secure people will be.” In modern
organizations, weapons are typically those of passive aggression. A leader
strategizing to squash a potential rival will have followers feeling less
secure as well as less virtuous. The aggression could come back to bite the
leader, or come to characterize the organizational culture more generally.

In addition to being stable, the followers of a Taoist
leader should be self-reliant. According to the verse, “the more subsidies you
have the less self-reliant people will be.” A leader should not act in ways
that make the followers dependent. This has an obvious implication for
government welfare. Citizens should be secure, and thus have the means to
sustain themselves (e.g., housing, food, medical care), but beyond that they should
be self-reliant. In an organization, followers should be encouraged to think for
themselves and take charge of their tasks rather than have a supervisor
constantly looking over their shoulders. The supervisor should not allow
subordinates to rely on having the boss decide difficult questions. Again, this
is counter-intuitive because leaders are accustomed to control rather than “freeing
up.”

In terms of more prohibitions resulting in less virtue among
followers and more subsidies reducing self-sufficiency, Nietzsche’s philosophy
is relevant. To Nietzsche, “thou shalt not” as a prohibition from morality is
in actuality aggression from the weak whose instinct to dominate is in
hyper-drive. Giving in to the prohibition makes one weak, which Nietzsche
characterizes in terms of sickness. The strong are self-confident in their
innate strength, hence they are self-reliant. For the strong to be vulnerable
to the moral manipulation of the weak who seek to dominate is for Nietzsche a
problem to be solved. Strength should not be vulnerable to moral proscriptions.
A pathos of distance should exist between the strong and the weak. While the
strong naturally give out of their overflowing surfeit, the intent should not
be to make the weak dependent. Nietzsche would doubtless agree with the Taoist
teachings regarding prohibitions and subsidies. The Taoist leader in turn could benefit from
Nietzsche’s point that generosity is not inconsistent with self-reliance.

The verse ends by essentially kicking out the crutches that
leaders are wont to use. Let go of the law, or rules, and people will become
honest. Toss out economics (presumably including planning), and people will
become wealthy. Resist the temptation to appropriate from religion and people
will become serene. Perhaps the most counter-intuitive of all, “let go of all
desire for the common good and the good becomes common as grass.” Much harm can
come from acting in the national or company interest, as the end of general
welfare can justify even rather sordid means. Moreover, letting go of desire may be behind letting go of
control, whether one controls through plans, policies, rules, retribution, or
subsidies.

Perhaps the leader who is willing to let go of the desire to
control stands the best chance of achieving control, not through the leader’s
own grasping, but, rather, in a self-governing organization. This entails stepping
out of the way so the Tao can govern. This, it seems to me, is the essence of
Taoist leadership. To be sure, it takes a certain amount of faith—that order
can happen even in the absence of policies and plans. In a business sense, one
of the rewards for leading on the basis of such faith is being able to forego
the costs in terms of time and money that go into making and enforcing
strategies, plans and policies.

The question is perhaps whether those things are really
necessary, or even constructive rather than detrimental. We mortals put such
stock in our little plans and yet perhaps the dynamics of the market and
geo-politics ultimately toss us around anyway. The common good may be naturally
provided for by those dynamics, while our leaders merely interfere.

Lest it be concluded that a Taoist leader just sits around, doing absolutely nothing,
getting out of the way and urging others to do so too is itself an action. “Leading by constantly
getting out of the way” may be the operative slogan for such a leader.
Considering how much leaders typically don't get out of the way, preferring to interject their own desires as if they were synonymous
with the common good, a leader attempting to apply Taoist principles would likely have his or her hands full—continually
emptying his own and others’ plates to make room for food that otherwise would
not be delivered. In other words, make a good product and get out of the way,
rather than “manage” it to death. Even if such a leader does not practice this completely, just getting out of the way to counter what would otherwise be too many policies would be good business.